growing razors in her lungs
by likeglory
Summary: When he haunts her, he cuts into her and makes it hard to breathe, makes her feel like she's slowly losing her mind. [ORIGINALLY POSTED @ AO3 ON 13 Feb 2014]


**A/N:** (edited on jan. 11th, 2015.) originally posted on ao3. a huge thank you to my beta reader anakinsw

* * *

The rooms in the new house, on the East Coast, outside of a small town, with less than five hundred people, old, rumbling trucks, and cigarette butts littering the sidewalks, are what Kira likes best about them – they're bigger than the apartment she and her parents lived in before, for sure. But she's small, only about nine years old. She's been moving a lot, because of her parents finding too many jobs in too many places and staying in discreet backwater towns for too short a time for her to make any friends or try and fade into the background.

For the first time, she gets her own bathroom. She's a bit young for that, her mother thinks, because she has trouble reaching the sink without her stepstool, and she has a tendency to roll off the bed in the middle of the night if she's dreaming of something particularly unpleasant – but it's okay.

There are a few downsides, though.

Kira's been having bad dreams, and has been nursing a quite stubborn fear of the dark that refuses to leave her be for as long as she can remember. She's needed nightlights; her parents leave the bathroom or hall-lights on, because when there is no light, she doesn't sleep.

It's not that she doesn't want to – really, she would like to, because sleep is nice, and her mother says she'll need it a lot more when she's older so she should really get over this whole thing someday soon – like, before middle school, preferably.

It's just that she _can't_.

Besides that, there's also the fact that both her parents work until seven or six – and leave before the sun is even up, so that means she has to get up and let the neighbor down the road walk her to school if she feels like going over and waking up the nice lady with the ferocious-looking terriers is the right thing to do.

It means she's usually alone until later in the evening, even on the weekends.

At first, it's not so bad – not as bad as New York had been, at least, because all the loud noises and sleepless nights had been so, _so_ much worse there, for the entire family – but Kira manages to take care of herself when she's home by herself. The silence gets to her more easily than the teasing of cruel boys and girls two schools ago, so she turns on the television and puts in disks of Scooby-Doo and Johnny Quest to make sure she's not listening to the house, because it's an old one, according to her father, an old one that will creak and moan and shift without her moving a muscle. Because, according to her father, it's normal and that's what old houses _do_.

But there are some days when she sits alone in the kitchen and simply listens, hands clasped in front of her with her backpack on the floor, papers and broken crayons spilling out it. She sits and listens in silence, because, as much as her parents would like to tell her, there _are_ some noises that aren't the house's fault.

Sometimes, she hears the floorboards creaking upstairs, or a door slam shut. It's during times like these when she leans against the counter and slides down so she's sitting on the floor with her arms wound around her knees, because when she starts hearing something slowly – _slowly_ – going down the stairs, she doesn't know what else to do.

Especially since her mother thinks she's merely overreacting and her father thinks she's just lonely. She is, honestly, lonely, that is: she doesn't really have any friends. People are nice to her most of the time, sure, but she doesn't spend time with anyone, doesn't get out much, so she stays indoors, and hides from things that probably aren't even there.

Things are okay, though, compared to last time, until January, when both of her parents are still out of the house, and she's home sick, in the gray afternoon light. She's in her bed, tucked under layers of quilts and blankets, sniffing and sneezing and trying not to cough up her lungs.

She's also been watching her closet.

It doesn't have any doors, which means that if anything so chose to hide in there, it could, and she'd be none the wiser, because she's _nine_, for god's sake, and who'd believe her when she'd say that there's been something creeping around the house? It sounds _crazy_.

It's cold in her room, and she's trying to go to sleep while she still can – but outside, in the hall, the floorboards have been creaking, and she hears things being moved in her room – little disturbances, nearly unnoticeable, but she hears them, and watches the closet with rapt attention, still as a board under her sheets.

What else can she do?

It's nearly six when he finally shows himself. It's dark outside, and when her nightlight begins to flicker near her nightstand, she inches her body out from under the covers – ready to run if she has to – and when he emerges from the closet, all smiles, long limbs, and features that show her that he's maybe around her age, if not older, she runs, because _he_ is not right, _he_ is something wrong, something _wicked._

But he manages to catch her around the middle, and he laughs as she screams at him, when her lungs betray her and she is left to cough until there's no air left before her body tries to recover. He steps away, and he laughs again before he disappears.

She doesn't know what he wants, or why he's here – but she knows he's followed her. Followed her for how long, she can't say, because he comes out from the shadows, with his forever-razor sharp grins, and sometimes, when she can't scream – when she forgets how to work her vocal chords and legs and feet because he's slowly walking towards her – _mocking her_ – it hurts to breathe. It's like he's cutting up her lungs, as he keeps her eyes on his own. He speaks to her as if he could be her friend but she knows _better _than to trust him – than to take his word, to believe him when he tells her all he wants is for her to let her _in_.

Kira isn't sure how that would work, but she doesn't want to. All she knows is that she has to make sure he doesn't touch her; his skin is like ice and his grip is bruising, and his eyes are flat like the table in her kitchen and his mouth is full of knives – full of sharp white teeth she knows will cut her in half if she lets him inside.

(She's only _nine years old. F_or Christ's _sake_.)

Eventually, her mother finds out – but not in the way she should have.

When her mother arrives at the house, in February – she hears crying, angry screaming – and she already knows what it is, before she reaches the top of the stairs and finds her daughter curled up on the bedroom floor, screaming for someone to go away, for someone to leave her alone and _never, **ever** come back_. Tears are running down her cheeks, matting her hair to her skin. Her eyes are puffy and her nose is red, and it takes her mother about six minutes before she can calm her down.

It only takes two more months of Kira's "fits" for them to move again. That's what they're calling them. _Fits_. Like they're tantrums.

And they move, several weeks later, and again four months after that. And again, and again, and again.

Again, he follows her, when they move, with a snarl and a razor-sharp grin, nearly cutting off her air supply, or jeering at her as she tries to run out of her room. Her parents are beginning to actually worry – _"she'll be in junior high soon – do we go see a doctor about this now?"_ and _"only if it progresses_" – and she hears it, sees it, knows it, as they move. Each and every time.

It changes, though. Everything changes eventually, because, as her mother says, nothing can stay the same forever. Nothing remains.

At age twelve, when they're in some town in northern Missouri, she finds her mother a few minutes after eight, when her father is still at work, and stands in front of her. Her fists are clenched, knuckles bleeding white.

"I'm haunted," she says, through clenched teeth, "I'm not crazy, Mom. He's still here."

Her mother sends her away, to her room. And there, she endures another night of sharp words from the lips of the boy, who seems to grow with her, who follows her _everywhere_, and she doesn't know why, but she wants him _gone_ – and, soon after her mother sends her to her room, she _screams_ at him – _demands_ that he leave her.

There is silence, and there is a grin, after she tells him to leave, once she's snapped her mouth shut, and her heart is no longer the only thing that she can hear in her ear, that slowly creeps into his lips, and cuts into his cheeks before he leans forward, bony fingers reaching for her – and she feels a sharp, jutting pain in her chest – in her lungs – like he's cutting into them with razors she cannot see.

And then he is _gone_. Just like that.

Even though he leaves, even though there are no longer as many sleepless nights, or nightmares, or long shadows waiting for her when she gets home from school, she should've known better than to believe that she was in the clear.

She should've _expected_ what was to come.

* * *

Kira no longer cries at night. She throws out her nightlights, she manages to stop her screaming – and her parents, they slowly begin to stop worrying. When months pass, and there are no nightmares that rouse them from sleep – that have them finding their daughter with a shiny sheen of sweat on her forehead, blankets clutched up to her chin – mumbling about some evil _thing_ in her room, in her closet, under the bed - they relax a bit.

They eventually find their way to Beacon Hills. It's not such a bad town – one of the better ones she's been to, admittedly. There are nice people here, too; she' been awkward forever, and the fact that a boy named Scott is making an effort to talk to her, even though her father is a teacher, and girls – Lydia, Allison, and Erica – a popular genius, arrow-shooting-best-friend-of-popular-genius, and a lovely epileptic with a heart of a gold and a will forged from steel - begin to talk to her as well.

Months pass, and she slowly begins to fade in with the crowds. She's still awkward, still manages to embarrass herself – but people are kinder here, than in other places, and it's good, that this is another fresh start – it's a place where her memories of waking up screaming, actually _screaming_ because a laughing evil boy – who _cannot_ be the a boy, but a monster, of some kind, with the way he vanished from her sight without a sound and with a smile as soon as her mother came running - do not greet her at every turn.

No, her parents are convinced that it was just some sort of phase – that she had an active imagination, or something – and even though Kira _knows_ better, she goes along with what they say. Even though, from time to time, she still peers inside her closet, though there is nothing cutting into her muscles, breaking apart her rib-cage from the inside anymore.

There is only the absence of pain.

* * *

It's in October, of her senior year, when Kira sees him again.

He's older, this time. He's a lot older – so _different_ – but she would know that grin of his, that sharp, cutting grin, anywhere. She would know that tilt of the head, that mocking laugh – and when she sees him, after school, she's walking home, because she insisted that Lydia take Allison shopping for dresses – because, even after so much time has passed, it feels like they could use some time without _her_ around. They all could, really, but it's not like they know about what happened. It's not like they know about what followed her from house to house when she was small, that her mother had considered sending her to get some _help_ from a doctor, if it got any worse, at age eleven.

They don't know, thank God. She doesn't know how that happened, though, because, somehow, someone always found out, and gave her grief for it.

(She remembers every cruel word everyone's ever said to her when she's up at night and she has to tell herself that she isn't crazy.)

Now, at seventeen, she walks through the woods – because this is a shortcut Ethan and Danny have showed her, because going around means walking downtown – and after three, _everyone_ is downtown, and the traffic and people alike are horrid to be around at that time of day.

And she walks alone.

She's not afraid anymore, not really. She's had no reason to be. So when she feels the tightening in her lungs, like there's a pressure on her chest, she thinks she's imagining things – but when she hears something snap behind her, she turns around, and has to stop walking –

Because there he stands, in his long-limbed and sharp-smiled glory, arms crossed over his chest, looking down at her from his place atop the hill.

"_You_," she manages, accusatory, and rightly so, because she can't quite believe what she's seeing. Her parents certainly wouldn't

He chuckles at her, like he can hear her thoughts from where he stands. He's taller, too – probably taller than her – and there's something worse about him, too. There's something darker, in the way that he looks at her, like he wants to steal every bit of oxygen from her lungs, and hold it over her head till she begs for it with voiceless pleas, airless screams.

He holds out his hands in a 'what-can-you-do' manner, like how Erica does when Isaac says something particularly contradicting to something that Boyd or Jackson might've said. She can see the white of his teeth as he smiles and speaks.

"Yeah, I know, I know – I mean, what can you do about it?" he sounds too pleased, too _satisfied_ with this, with her reaction, with the _fear_ pouring out of her bones, through her skin, and into the air around her.

He takes a step forward, and Kira takes a step back.

_He wasn't supposed to come back_.

"Oh, you're surprised?" he sounds so smug, she wishes the ground would open up and swallow her whole. She should've expected this. Looking back now, she should have known. She should have _known_. That long stretch of peace, of _silence_ -

She is terrified.

No, no, _no this cannot be happening, not again, not like this_.

She really, truly is – even though she shouldn't be, even though she knows, somehow, that she should stand her ground – but she is. Her mouth is dry, and she cannot answer him.

"You know, Kira," he takes a breath, "they used to call me Stiles," he tells her, as he begins to walk towards her.

In turn, she begins to back away, eyes wide, body tense – heart pounding in her ears.

"Go _away_." Her voice is shrill and shaky –

_This cannot be happening_.

He smiles, and shakes his head at her.

She has so many questions, so many demands on the tip of her tongue - because she really doesn't fucking _need_ him here right now, and she'd _really_ like it if he could, well, _disappear_ from her sight like he did six years ago – and never show up again – but she wants to know, know _why_ -

Before Kira knows it, she's running, book back thumping against her hip. His laughter rings out in the trees as she feels him grab the strap of her bag – he yanks – and she goes rolling and ends up on her side, for a moment, before she can scramble to her feet.

His laughter follows her all the way to her house, as gasping sobs escape her lips while she slams the door and calls out frantically for her mother.

"He's _here_," she sobs, when her mother comes out, brow furrowed – something like disappointment on her face –_ no, no, no_ – "Mom, _Mom_, he's here – he's _outside_, he chased me through the woods—"

Kira is hysterical after that – and that – _that_ is when her mother calls her father, and takes her to the hospital, even though she's screaming at her, even though she's crying, pleading, _begging _them to understand.

"_You don't **get** it – he's here, he's real, his name is Stiles – I'm telling you, Mom, why can't you believe me?"_

And her mother won't say anything. She'll just grip her hand a little bit tighter as she sits her down and waits for a nurse to see them about an emergency appointment.

Kira looks up, with shaking hands, wiping at her cheeks, to see _him_ – **_Stiles_** (_what the hell kind of name is Stiles?_) waving at her from the window of the waiting room, grinning, expression smug – giving her a thumbs-up.

She tries not to retch as her mother gets her out of her chair, to follow the doctor into an exam room with feet made of lead and a stuttering, frantic heart while trying not to blubber about the _thing_ that has, for some reason, shown up. Unexpectedly, years later.

Out of nowhere. Without any warning at all.

* * *

The day that Kira finds herself in the institution is the day that Stiles leaves her with a promise that he'll drop by, every now and then – even though she screams, because there is no use hiding it now – _"they think I'm crazy and it's all your fault"_ – and he's not in the least bit sorry. No, he's happy. Beyond happy, in fact. Ecstatic. _Thrilled_.

He smiles at her, posture relaxed, slouching with his hands in his pockets while she yells and screams in her room, locked away by the orderlies – because she is seen as uncooperative, in this place – and he ends up cutting her from the inside, with a solid razor, that she coughs up, that evening, hours after he appears. He leaves her bleeding on the floor, but not before his nails scrape gashes across her cheeks.

She coughs up blood, metal, and she hears his laughter when orderlies rush in and call for the doctor – and a blood transfusion. She feels like the air is cold and burning her lungs from the inside out as she is rushed to urgent medical care – and she hears his laughter. All through the halls, she hears him.

He told her he would leave her, because he haunts her, for her pain, and her suffering, and everything that's ever been messed up in her life – because of _him_ – but he hasn't gone anywhere.

She coughs up razors that he sticks in her lungs, and yet she still lives on. And he laughs, and smiles, with chapped lips that cut into her like a knife through hot butter, and make her wish that there was a way out, because there is _no_ time or escape here - just the rising and setting of the sun, the doctors, the other patients, the orderlies – and _him_, Stiles, _Stiles._ – who gives her a thumbs-up every time she is rushed away, with blood smeared on her throat and chin.

There is no getting out.

She is _stuck_ here, with a being that does not eat or sleep. He only cuts with her with his voice box, and makes sure her lungs are wrapped up in barbed-wire as the months pass her by.

He is evil, and he is _wrong_. He likes to remind her that there is no getting out of this place, or away from him, alive. She cannot escape this place, and, even if she did, she could not escape him. No matter how fast she ran or how far she went, he'd find her and drag her back here, or someplace worst, kicking and screaming and struggling to breathe.

In hindsight, she realizes that he had been waiting, lying in wait, for _years_.

* * *

Stiles is made up of blades and sharp smiles stained with her blood.

_And there is no getting out._


End file.
